N11-11: Looong Before John’s Gospel, Judaism Had Already Identified A Divine Being Known As THE WORD

Over the last couple of posts, I think I have tried my darnedest  to demonstrate how the idea of the Holy Spirit indwelling in men was absolutely NOT something that began in the New Testament.

Along these same lines I’d like to explore what I consider to probably be one of the most ridiculous beliefs ever propagated onto the minds of men by the gentile Christian church.

I’m talking about the teaching that it was at the beginning of the Gospel of John that mankind was given a whole new revelation that had never before been unveiled.

The opening verses of the Gospel of John are widely assumed to be the basis for a whole new religion.

Let’s take a look at these verses of which I’m sure you’ll be quite familiar.

“In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God.  
It was in the beginning with God.
All things came into being by It,
and apart from It nothing came into
being that has come into being.
In It was life,
and the life was the light of men.
And the light shines in the darkness,
and the darkness did not comprehend it.”
-John 1:1-5

Now here’s where things get interesting.

This idea that the Word was with God and is God did NOT, and I repeat did NOT begin in the New Testament with the Gospel of John.

The truth of the matter is that John was rehashing a well-understood and actually quite widespread idea that was quite accepted by mainstream Jews in its time.

In fact, and this might blow your mind, ancient Hebrew writings attest to the fact the ancient Jewish Sages actually had vigorous debates over the exact nature of this “Word“.

Some of the thought-provoking questions that arose were…

Is God ONE or is He Two?

Is the Word another God separate from YHVH?

Is this Word a separate being from God or is it just an extension or an attribute of God?

It might be surprising but these were the kinds of questions being tossed around and seriously debated by the ancient Rabbis in a staunchly monotheistic Israel.

And of course, we all know what the Christians did, they made “Jesus” this Word and in their translations of John’s Prologue decided to refer to the word as “he” instead of an “it“.

It is beyond the scope of this post to debunk any of these church doctrines at this point.

The main point I want to get across is that the Rabbis had already identified a divine being or attribute of HASHEM known as the Word looooooooooooooooooooong before Yeshua came onto the scene.

In Hebrew, the Word is MEMRA and in Greek the Word is called LOGOS.

These two terms are referring to the exact same thing.

The biggest takeaway is this.

The gentile Church, which in many cases was quite anti-Semitic, has tried to make belief in Yeshua incompatible with true Biblical Judaism.

But Nothing could be further from the truth.

It is NOT the New Testament that teaches something foreign to true Biblical Judaism.

It is gentile scholarship that has superimposed an anti-Semitic bias and a Greek way of thinking onto what is essentially a Jewish document that has led to confusion and false doctrines.